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Remote learning during the pandemic has ushered in new ways of connecting teachers and students. Hugh Gatenby imagines a bold new future where remote learning, technology and reimagined classroom design combine to revolutionise education.
The shape of things to come A new type of learning Fifteen and a half million students in the UK were affected by school closures during the Covid-19 pandemic, UNESCO reports. From their homes, students relied on remote learning technology to link them to their schools, where their teachers were broadcasting lessons from otherwise empty classrooms. It was an unprecedented experiment into the viability of remote learning, and one that teachers and students were forced into without any time to prepare, and with inadequate resources – particularly the prerequisite laptops or tablets. In spite of these obstacles, Ofsted’s research into remote learning found that the majority of teachers expressed some confidence that they were delivering a high-quality education. Remote learning is possible: we can connect teachers and students in different places to form one shared learning experience. This conclusion might seem irrelevant in light of the full reopening of schools. It has certainly been important to restore students with a school life that is separate from their home life, and we no longer need to link homes and schools together. However, linking schools to other schools with remote learning technology is a powerful prospect. Anthony Seldon, educationalist and historian, is critical of the familiar classroom. He likens them to factories where every student is given the same treatment as if on a production line, even though they progress at different
rates in different subjects. Those who learn slowest are soon left behind, and those who learn fastest become disengaged and disruptive without being adequately challenged. This “factory model” of learning has remained unchanged because it has been impossible to imagine an alternative without adding to the cost of education by increasing the staff to student ratio. If you need to bring together 30 students for every lesson, it is hard to ensure they are all at the same point in their learning, or that they experience the same barriers to progressing, when you can only draw from a relatively small school population. This is where the recent success with remote learning becomes relevant. By linking schools to other schools, teachers could lead lessons with well-matched groups of 30, drawing from the whole school-age population. Seldon has argued that we are in need of a revolution in education: remote learning could be it. A new design of classroom To implement this kind of learning in our schools we will need to reimagine classroom design. Classrooms designed for remote learning will be a different size to the classrooms of today. Since the group for each lesson will be spread across a number of schools, no single classroom will need capacity for a full cohort of 30. Instead smaller classrooms will link with other smaller classrooms up and down the country.
